


seconds & firsts

by brofluvski



Category: South Park
Genre: Childhood Friends, Depression, Fourth of July, M/M, One Shot, Underage Smoking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-20
Updated: 2019-05-20
Packaged: 2020-03-08 15:35:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18897544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brofluvski/pseuds/brofluvski
Summary: Sometimes misery isn't such bad company.





	seconds & firsts

**Author's Note:**

> part of my short story requests from tumblr! if you have any ideas or requests, you can send them [here](https://kylebiased.tumblr.com/post/184998755339/send-me-a-ship-and-a-number-and-ill-write-a-short) ♡
> 
> my first time writing stenny (; gift for @ttoolshed on tumblr!
> 
> ✿HMU✿  
> discord: lai#1475  
> peep my sp [tumblr](https://kylebiased.tumblr.com/) (also @kylebiased if the link doesn't work!)

Most had assumed it’d be Kyle.

It wasn’t difficult to guess or assume, his real romantic awakening had been Kyle. Why _wouldn’t_ it be Kyle? Kyle, Stan’s “super-best-friend”, the most reliable and most trusted person in his life, no, it wasn’t Kyle. It was never Kyle.

As Stan and Kyle drifted apart, he found himself becoming closer to somebody else. Kyle was out doing other things. He was pursuing girls, or studying or cleaning up other people’s messes; that was something obvious. He seemed to lack the time that Stan wanted from him. And he wistfully waited for from him, but the pain was softened when he had Kenny around. Somebody familiar, yet new.

Stan and Kenny had had their own experiences together, but it was when they’d really started bonding that Stan realized there was something special to him. He found himself always seeing the negative. The older he got, the sooner sunset came. He knew it was nothing but psychological. His mind playing tricks. Maybe sunset only _seemed_ to come sooner, because nightfall was when the chronic sadness hit him the hardest. It was dark. The sky was lifeless. It was summer, and still, it’d come so soon.

It was the Fourth of July, the summer after their fourth year of the school and the four boys set out on bikes to head off to Stark’s Pond. There were fireworks. The ban had been lifted for that very summer and they’d all been ecstatic to go, but Stan wasn’t.

His dad was drinking again. Shelly was developing. She dressed differently now. His mother, he was very certain, had started taking more antidepressants than she was prescribed for a day and so had he. Nothing worked anymore. He and Wendy were over. And nobody seemed to take notice when he stopped pedalling a block before they’d be there. Kyle and Cartman were competing to see who could arrive first. He wished that could be him. To be careless and to _just_ be a kid.

“Hey.”

It was dim that night. Kenny had stopped a few feet in front of him. The only one to notice he’d stopped, apparently.

“What’s up?”

“You can go ahead,” Stan muttered. “The fireworks are starting in, like, five minutes.”

“Is something wrong with your bike?”

“...sure,” he mumbled. “Just go on without me.”

Kenny’s bike didn’t come with a kick-stand, so when he crawled up, he had to hold it himself, clutching the handles. “What’s wrong?”

What was _wrong?_ What was _wrong?_ It was such an open-ended question, he wasn’t even certain how to read it. _Everything_ was wrong. He was anxious, depressed, lonely. A little bit heartbroken. A better question would have been, “What’s _right?”_

“Nothing.”

“C’mon, Stan,” he laughed. “What’s up?”

“Really...it’s nothing.”

 _“Stan,”_ he spoke clearly. His eyes were blue, as were Stan’s, but a lighter shade. They seemed to get lighter and lighter, the further they aged. A condition of dying over and over again, but that was only of Kenny’s recollection. Stan only thought they were the coolest eyes he’d ever seen. “I can hang behind for a while. What’s up?”

Thus, began a stronger friendship. He had been so used to Kenny’s silence; Kenny rarely ever spoke. He had become accustomed to it. But when he spoke, he spoke with wisdom. He spoke like someone who’d been through more than they deserved, because he _was,_ and yet he wasn’t resentful. He wanted to help. He let Stan rant. He didn’t give him poor advice. He didn’t invalidate him. He just let him talk and then Kenny talked and that became their thing.

They talked to each other when nobody else was prepared to listen.

That was what they bonded over.

And soon that became something more than a friendship.

The first boy he ever fell for. Kenny was like looking back at a negative reflection. Not negative, they weren’t perfect opposites. No, they were different in lots of ways, but ways that made the other half feel whole. He had light blue eyes and crooked teeth and his hair was dirty blonde and shaggy, and that was a thing of beauty and that was the only person who truly cared.

_Kenny._

And there they sat, a block away from the Fourth of July fireworks. Kyle and Cartman were there. Maybe they noticed their absence, maybe they didn’t, but by now they were 17 and this was the norm. They did it every single year.

Where there had once been four, remained two.

“Did you bring cigarettes?”

“Always,” Kenny nodded. He held out the box to Stan, producing a lighter from his pocket. “Y’know, smoking kills.”

Stan crossed his fingers over each other, letting Kenny ignite the tip. He held it up to his lips, taking a long-needed drag. _“Thank god.”_

“Long day?”

“Long day.”

“Do you remember the first time we did this?”

“Yeah,” Stan mumbled. “I still owe you for that.”

“What for?” Kenny laughed. “Honestly, Stan, I kinda just assumed you’d like, been checking your phone or tying your shoe or something.”

“Nah,” he shrugged. “I was in a really bad place that night.”

He nodded. “Yeah. I mean, I learned that later.”

“You made it better though,” he sighed. Smoke drifted off into the sky, the hot tips of their two cigarettes the only light between them. “I mean, nobody ever asked me, like...nobody ever just asked me if I was okay.”

“Nobody?”

 _“Nobody,”_ he shrugged. “My family was moving and my dad was always on about some new kinda bullshit and was everything changing, and just...I was getting so tired of _acting_ okay. I wasn’t okay. But _you_ asked.”

“I mean, I kinda know where you’re coming from,” Kenny nodded. “You don’t have to thank me for that. I asked because I cared.”

“I know. That’s what made it so much more special.”

They sat in silence for a moment, before Kenny spoke-up.

“Hey, Stan?”

“Yeah?”

“You were my first.”

He hesitated. “Your first...your _first…?”_

“First crush,” he mumbled. “On a guy? I mean...I guess I feel kinda weird saying that, but as long as we’re getting gay bullshit off our chests, you were my first.”

“No kidding,” he mumbled. The smell of smoke hung in the air and briefly clouded Stan’s thoughts. Or maybe that’d been Kenny’s confession. Maybe both, but he felt as though his tongue had swollen up and it was trapped in his throat. Maybe that sounded dramatic, but he was certain that was exactly what was happening. “You wanna hear something insane?”

“It’s probably not as insane as you think it is,” Kenny laughed. “Insane is my norm.”

“You were my first too.”

He paused. And It wasn’t the intoxicating smell of smoke delaying him. “I thought it was Kyle.”

“Why would it be _Kyle?”_

“Because literally, _everyone_ has a thing for Kyle,” he rolled his eyes. _“God.”_

“It wasn’t Kyle,” he murmured. “It’s you.”

“...you ever kissed a guy?”

Stan had. Once at a party. They’d made out, actually. Some guy from another high school. He remembered he was on the swim team and that was all he remembered. Alcohol was nothing more than an agent to repressed memory.

Too bad he’d already kissed a guy.

“...yeah,” Stan murmured. “I actually have.”

“So have I,” Kenny laughed, taking another drag. “I guess that’s where our ‘firsts’ end.”

“I guess so.”

“Have _we_ ever kissed before?”

Stan knew the answer to this one. No repressed memory. _“No,”_ he answered. “No, you and I haven’t kissed before.”

“So, that’d be a first, right?”

And apparently, that was a good enough excuse.

Fireworks filled up the sky and the void in Stan’s heart, and the impermanent space between them closed forever.


End file.
